Web Series

  • Seeing the Whole: Design for Climate, Biodiversity, and Justice in a Complex and Dynamic World
    Mariana Mogilevich and Sarah Wesseler
    Editors
  • GRANTEE
    The Architectural League of New York
    GRANT YEAR
    2022

"Greetings ... from the International Space Station," 2017. Courtesy NASA/Mark Vande Hei

Seeing the Whole: Design for Climate, Biodiversity, and Justice in a Complex and Dynamic World convenes and publishes deep discussions, among individuals with a variety of expertises and perspectives, around six design scenarios. The goal of the project is to articulate and communicate modes of thinking and decision-making methodologies to help designers act on urgent and simultaneous imperatives to address climate change, biodiversity loss, and justice issues. Although these issues are deeply intersectional, approaches to addressing them may be in tension; the ways in which “clean” electric energy is generated, for example, may have powerful effects on habitat and biodiversity loss, and unexamined material provenances may hide labor and environmental abuses. Urgent actions are necessary; the frames of analysis for deciding upon actions must be large and inclusive.

Mariana Mogilevich is editor in chief of Urban Omnibus (UO), where she creates overall editorial strategy, commissions and works with contributors, and develops special projects. Mogilevich has conceptualized and edited a number of thematic series on UO, including The Location of Justice, on the built manifestations of the criminal justice system in New York City, and Cleaning Up? on remediation and its meaning and limitations in an environment of pervasive toxicity. An historian of architecture and urbanism, her research focuses on the design and politics of the public realm. Her book The Invention of Public Space: Designing for Inclusion in Lindsay’s New York was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2020. Mogilevich will oversee the publication of Seeing the Whole materials on urbanomnibus.net.

Sarah Wesseler is the digital editor of The Architectural League, where she focuses on content strategy and development for the organization’s website, archleague.org. In 2019 and 2020, she led the online editorial component of Towards a New Architecture: Climate Change and Design, a League project focused on global warming. She is a regular contributor to Yale Climate Connections, an online publication run by the Yale Center for Environmental Communication, writing about a wide range of issues related to climate mitigation and adaptation. She previously worked as a writer and editor at global engineering firm Arup and has contributed to numerous independent publishing initiatives. Wesseler will help shape and edit Seeing the Whole features for archleague.org.

Rosalie Genevro is executive director of The Architectural League, where she has led many initiatives over the last twenty years at the intersection of architecture and climate change. Projects have included the traveling exhibition and catalogue Ten Shades of Green; the multiyear Five Thousand Pound Life project, with conferences on land, energy, water, and transportation, as well as multiple lectures and curated publications; and the lecture series Towards a New Architecture: Climate Change and Design. She is a founding member of the steering committee of the US branch of Architects Declare, a network of firms dedicated to action on the intertwined emergencies of climate change, biodiversity loss, and social, economic, and environmental injustice. Genevro is project director for Seeing the Whole: Design for Climate, Biodiversity, and Justice in a Complex and Dynamic World.

Paul Lewis is a principal at LTL Architects in New York City and a professor at Princeton University’s School of Architecture. LTL Architects has completed academic and institutional projects throughout the United States, including Upson Hall at Cornell University; a model school for early childhood education in Bentonville, Arkansas; and projects at Vassar, NYU, and Columbia. Lewis served as a member of the inaugural steering committee for US Architects Declare, and developed an innovative studio/seminar in 2022 at Princeton entitled Building and Embodied Carbon. Lewis is a member of the advisory committee for Seeing the Whole.

Brian Loughlin is director of planning and urban design at Magnusson Architecture and Planning in New York City, a leading designer of affordable housing. He is cochair of the AIANY Housing Committee, and serves as national chair of the American Planning Association Housing and Community Development Division. Earlier in his career, Loughlin was director of New Construction at the New York City Housing Authority, and chief architect at the Jersey City, NJ Housing Authority. Loughlin is a member of the advisory committee for Seeing the Whole.

Jesse M. Keenan is the Favrot II Associate Professor of Real Estate at the School of Architecture at Tulane University in New Orleans. Keenan’s teaching and research advances the interdisciplinary fields of sustainable real estate and infrastructure finance and development. He formerly served as a review editor (Built Environment and Transportation chapters) of the 4th US National Climate Assessment (NCA4) and as a review editor (Buildings) for WG III (AR 6) for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, and currently serves as an appointed author of the Built Environment chapter for the 5th US National Climate Assessment (NCA5) by the US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). Keenan in a member of the advisory committee for Seeing the Whole.

The Architectural League of New York, founded in 1881, nurtures excellence in architecture, design, and urbanism, and stimulates thinking, debate, and action on the critical design and building issues of our time. From its inception, the League’s programs have emphasized architecture as an artistic and cultural practice. A cornerstone of the League’s work has been to identify talented architects and encourage their creative development, through programs such as Emerging Voices and the League Prize. Simultaneously, lectures, exhibitions, competitions, design studies, publications, and digital media are shaped to foster discussion of important issues in the built environment. Recent and continuing work takes on critically important issues including climate change, housing equity, and the impact of digital technologies on the functioning and experience of buildings and cities. The League has committed itself to combat racism, in any manifestation, in its own work and in the discipline of architecture.